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Recipes

chocolate chip zucchini bread

It’s late summer which means that you probably have zucchini the size of toddlers growing in your backyard or left on your doorstep in the night by a neighbor or delivered in your CSA box. This recipe is here to help you out. We made several variations, tweaking the recipe each time to maximize the amount of zucchini used, minimize refined sugar and retain deliciousness. I won’t claim this bread is healthy, but I also don’t think you should feel guilty eating it for breakfast. You are using up those zucchini after all.

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Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
3 eggs
2/3 cup coconut oil (or vegetable oil)
1 cup crushed pineapple
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 1/2 cups zucchini, shredded
1 cup walnuts
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup flaked coconut, toasted (optional – we did it once, but didn’t repeat for the next few batches)

Preheat your oven to 325° F. Grease two loaf pans with butter and dust with flour.

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Combine flours, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg in a medium bowl. In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, oil, pineapple and sugar.  Add grated zucchini into to the other wet ingredients. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir until just combined.

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Stir in walnuts, chocolate chips and coconut if using. Divide batter into two loaf pans. Bake 30 – 40 minutes, until a tester inserted into the center comes out dry.

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Enjoy! For breakfast, lunch and dessert!

Categories
Recipes

spelt quick bread

This recipe is dedicated to my mother. This bread precisely is her type of bread. She’s never been a fan of fluffy white breads, at least not in my memory. As kids we’d plead for a sandwich loaf that didn’t look like a bird feeder. But, since we cannot help but turn into our parents, my recent love affair with seedy loaves probably shouldn’t come as a surprise.

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This bread is dense and nutty. Two slices of it and you’ll feel full until noon. I’ve been tweaking the recipe for a few weeks and now it comes close to a few really great spelt breads that you can find around San Francisco that kicked off my recent obsession.

This is a quick bread, which means you just mix and bake. With no waiting for dough to rise and loaves to proof, you can have a hot loaf of bread in about an hour and a half.

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Spelt Quick Bread
4 cups spelt flour
1/2 cup sesame seeds
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon molasses
3 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 egg
2 – 2 1/4 cups milk
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
butter for greasing the pans

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Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour two 9 x 5 loaf pans. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sesame seeds, baking soda and salt. In another medium bowl, whisk together the molasses, honey, brown sugar, egg and milk. Combine the wet and dry ingredients in the larger bowl, stirring to combine. Spoon half of the batter into each loaf pan. Top generously with sesame seeds.

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Place both loaf pans side by side with some room between in the middle rack of the oven. Cover both with a baking sheet. This will help get a nice even brown crust on the top that doesn’t split open. Bake 40 minutes – 1 hour, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

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We love this bread topped with goat cheese for lunch or dinner. It is also lovely for breakfast broiled with butter and cinnamon sugar.

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-Emily

Categories
Recipes

pumpkin bread

It’s fall, which also makes it time to bust out pumpkin-everything. First up to the plate …  pumpkin bread. The sugar crust on this bread is lovely, the spices are perfectly balanced and it has a moist, delicate crumb. Basically it is everything you want from a quick bread.

Pumpkin Tea Cake, from the Tartine Bakery Cookbook
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1 T plus 2 t cinnamon
2 t nutmeg, freshly ground if possible
1/4 t ground cloves
1 cup plus 2 T pumpkin puree
1 cup vegetable oil
1 1/3 cups sugar
3/4 t salt
3 eggs
2 T sugar for topping

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Butter a loaf pan.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, soda and spices into the bowl of your stand mixer or a large bowl.

In another bowl, whisk together pumpkin, oil, sugar, and salt.  Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. On low speed, mix the wet ingredients into the dry. Mix until just combined. You don’t want to over mix because it will make a tough bread.

Sprinkle with the sugar topping and bake for about an hour. Let cool in the pan for 20 minutes and then invert onto a rack to cool completely.

In what I thought was a stroke of pure genius, I decided to try to turn this pumpkin bread into pumpkin donut muffins. You might remember my life-changing donut muffin experience, but in case you need a refresher, check it out here. We thought that pumpkin donut muffins would be the crowning achievement of my life, but sadly (or perhaps not so sadly because now I still have future achievement to look forward to) the donut muffin topping did not really add anything to the pumpkin bread. This bread stands up perfectly well on its own. Those pumpkin donut muffins did look adorable though …

-Emily